CON AIR 1997 action picture starring Nicholas Cage, directed by Jerry Bruckheimer Touchstone Home Video; rated R; 115 minutes. This is a movie about a bunch of wily art- and indie-movie actors who hijack a big-budget action film and ride it to huge paychecks. How else to explain the presence of respected personages such as Steve Buscemi, John Cusack, Ving Rhames and Colm Meaney -- not to mention Nicolas Cage and John Malkovich, who are plenty mainstream, but not for lack of talent -- in a Jerry Bruckheimer blow-'em-up testosterone fest?

From the province of Galicia, Spain, let's welcome Chef Jesus Seoane on "Cocinando con Suso." (Applause) And so begins the weekly segment of the Spanish-language cooking show produced at Lyman Kitchens in Hartford and aired by Telemundo on Channel 11 every Friday at 11:30 a.m. A trained chef who knows his way around the stove and the television, Seoane is animated, funny and passionate about cooking and bringing his passion into the kitchens...

`Con Air" casts Nicolas Cage as a good ole Alabama boy who just wants to come home to his wife and the daughter he has never seen to celebrate her 8th birthday. But the flight is horribly turbulent, and Cage's Cameron Poe just has to be a hero -- even if it kills him. In what amounts to a tryout for Superman (Cage is the leading candidate to revive the franchise), Poe proves impervious to harm. Bullets don't bounce off him, but just one gets close enough to cause a flesh wound.

New releases When a Stranger Calls (Sony, 2006) -- The new "Stranger" scores over the 1979 original. It strips the tale down to its essentials: girl in a big, strange house, watching two kids she hasn't bothered to meet, getting a succession of prank-to-menacing phone calls. But director Simon West ("Con Air") has wisely realized that it's not what we see but what we imagine that's scarier. We know where he's going, but there's pleasure in just watching a tale unfold precisely as you know it must, so long as you're in expert hands.

Nicolas Cage is back for the second summer in a row in a big action picture. A year ago, he was the hip innocent caught between Sean Connery and Ed Harris in "The Rock." On Friday, audiences will see him as another man in the middle in "Con Air," as John Cusack tries to save a plane hijacked by John Malkovich with the hapless Cage aboard. Over the years, Cage has remade himself into an actor to reckon with. But despite his muscles -- displayed in the failed remake of "Kiss of Death" -- and his ability to transform himself from the killer psycho in that '90s film noir to the self-immolating drunk in `Leaving Las Vegas," he seems oddly out of place, say, slogging through the subterranean passages of Alcatraz with Connery.

Three people you wouldn't normally find together at a fancy party: country's Trisha Yearwood, pop diva Celine Dion and post-grunge folkie Elliott Smith. Yet here they were in line, taking a bow late during the 70th Annual Academy Awards program, in one of the two train-wreck segments that slammed together the best-song candidates. Normally, the song category offers a chance to break up the reading of nominees and speeches with welcome, relevant music. During Monday's program, cluttered with self- congratulating retrospective film clips and missed cues, the songs seemed necessary evils -- like reading Academy bylaws.

CON AIR 1997 action picture starring Nicholas Cage, directed by Jerry Bruckheimer Touchstone Home Video; rated R; 115 minutes. This is a movie about a bunch of wily art- and indie-movie actors who hijack a big-budget action film and ride it to huge paychecks. How else to explain the presence of respected personages such as Steve Buscemi, John Cusack, Ving Rhames and Colm Meaney -- not to mention Nicolas Cage and John Malkovich, who are plenty mainstream, but not for lack of talent -- in a Jerry Bruckheimer blow-'em-up testosterone fest?

Batman & Robin -- George Clooney dons the the Bat cape, and Chris O'Donnell swings back as the Boy Wonder, in this enjoyable, high-flying installment of the "Batman" franchise. Uma Thurman and Arnold Schwarzenegger delight as the verdant Poison Ivy and silvery Mr. Freeze. PG-13. . Brassed Off! -- Pete Postlethwaite, Tara Fitzgerald and Ewan McGregor are members of a brass band in a Yorkshire colliery town in this dark yet upbeat comedy written and directed by Mark Herman. R. . 1/2 Buddy -- Rene Russo stars in the true story of Gertrude Lintz, a socialite who nurses an ailing infant ape to robust health.